North Korea tested missiles in first challenge to Biden administration: US official
WASHINGTON, United States — North Korea fired several missiles just days after a visit to the region by the top US defense and diplomatic officials, the White House said Tuesday, in Pyongyang's first overt challenge to the Biden administration.
But administration officials, speaking anonymously, downplayed the missiles as "common" military testing and said they would not block Washington's efforts to engage with North Korea on denuclearization.
Two missiles were fired on Sunday, they confirmed, echoing Pyongyang's past practices for provoking and testing both Washington and Seoul.
But they were short-range, non-ballistic missile systems that do not fall under UN security council resolutions banning more threatening weapons, a senior US administration official told reporters.
It was nothing like the nuclear weapon tests or ballistic missile launches that Pyongyang has used to provoke previous US governments, the official said.
"What we saw this weekend does not fall in that category," the official said.
"It is common practice for North Korea to test various systems," the official said.
"We do not respond to every kind of test."
Reigniting talks
The launches came just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Japan and South Korea to discuss their alliance and security issues in the region, with nuclear-armed North Korea seen as a central threat.
Their visit also followed March 8-17 joint exercises by US and South Korea defense forces.
While Blinken and Austin were in Seoul on March 18, North Korean first vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui accused the United States of a "lunatic theory of 'threat from North Korea' and groundless rhetoric about 'complete denuclearisation.'"
President Joe Biden's two-month-old administration hopes to reignite negotiations with the Kim Jong Un regime on its nuclear arsenal after efforts by the previous administration of Donald Trump stalled.
Initial outreach from Washington to Pyongyang has turned up empty, but US officials are hopeful they can reconnect, while working in coordination with allies Japan and South Korea.
Trump met with Kim twice, in Singapore and Vietnam, with both sides heralding a breakthrough in relations.
But even as the United States pulled back on some joint training activities with South Korea's military and the North froze ballistic missile tests, after the February 2019 Trump-Kim Hanoi summit communications between the two sides dried up.
Biden officials are now finalizing a strategy to restart talks that the White House will discuss with Japanese and South Korean security officials next week, the administration official said.
"We have taken efforts and we will continue to take efforts" to communicate, the official said.
But the official added that Pyongyang cannot expect concessions — such as cutting back on bilateral military exercises — from Biden.
"The hope of diplomacy really rests on the reality of deterrence and our forward-deployed capabilities," the official said.
"So we thought that some of the efforts that were taken previously to turn off necessary exercises were actually antithetical to our position."
Small cruise missile
Analysts said the initial silence of South and North Korea, as well as the United States, on the missile launches was different from past behavior and possibly a good sign.
North Korean missile tests are commonly accompanied by boastful announcements from Pyongyang and strident attacks from Seoul.
Martyn Williams of the Stimson Center called the lack of comment "curious."
"North Korea usually announces such tests after the fact through state media but nothing this time," he wrote on Twitter.
"The tests are usually also reported pretty quickly after they happen through Japanese and Korean media, but nothing."
Another North Korea expert, Jeffrey Lewis, said that the tests might have been of short-range coastal defense cruise missiles.
"If that's what this is, it's a pretty mild response to a US-ROK military drill," he said, referring to the Republic of Korea.
South Korean officials were briefing the White House Thursday on the outcome of their pathfinding meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Seoul has already publicized that North Korea offered talks with the United States on denuclearization and normalizing ties, a potential diplomatic opening after a year of escalating tensions over the North's nuclear and missile tests. The rival Koreas also agreed to hold a leadership summit in late April.
Top Trump administration officials were getting a chance to hear firsthand from South Korean national security director, Chung Eui-yong, who led the delegation that went to Pyongyang. — Associated Press
South Korea's defense ministry says Thursday it was "closely monitoring" a North Korean nuclear reactor site after local media reported its operations had been temporarily suspended, potentially to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
The Donga Ilbo newspaper reports earlier in the day that intelligence sources in Seoul and Washington had detected signs the five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon had temporarily stopped operations late last month.
The suspension could be an indication that spent fuel rods are being reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, the report cited a government source as saying. — AFP
State media reports that North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature has enshrined the country's status as a nuclear weapons power in the constitution.
"The DPRK's nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout with anything," leader Kim Jong Un said at a meeting of the State People's Assembly that was held Tuesday and Wednesday, the KCNA news agency says.
DPRK is the acronym for the country's formal name. — AFP
State news agency KCNA reports that North Korea announced it had built a "tactical nuclear attack submarine" as part of its effort to strengthen its naval force.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over the unveiling ceremony on Wednesday, saying the new sub was part of a "push forward with the nuclear weaponization of the Navy in the future", according to KCNA.
The launching of submarine No. 841, named the Hero Kim Kun Ok, "heralded the beginning of a new chapter for bolstering up the naval force of the DPRK", the KCNA report said, referring to the country by the abbreviation of its formal name. — AFP
State-controlled media reports Sunday that North Korea staged a "simulated tactical nuclear attack" drill at the weekend with mock atomic warheads attached to two long-range cruise missiles that were test-fired into the ocean.
The Korean Central News Agency says the operation early Saturday was a "counteraction drill" in response to joint military activity by US and South Korean forces that KCNA said has escalated tensions in the region.
"A firing drill for simulated tactical nuclear attack was conducted at dawn of September 2 to warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger," KCNA reports. — AFP
Seoul's military says North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its west coast on Saturday, the latest in a string of recent Pyongyang military actions.
The launches come three days after the North launched a pair of short-range ballistic missiles as part of a "tactical nuclear strike drill" prompted by the annual US-South Korean Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, which always infuriate the reclusive regime.
Pyongyang views such the drills as a rehearsal for invasion while the two allies say they are defensive in nature. — AFP
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